Potty Training For The First Time

This post feels long over due as we now have a semi potty trained toddler, and we’re surviving – haha!Following on from my YouTube video, “Preparing to Potty Train”, where I spoke about all of the things we’d picked up ahead of potty training Amelia, I want to share our journey of potty training for the first time.
For reference, Amelia is 3 in October and we began potty training mid June I believe (you’ll have to bear with my memory for dates), and what an eye opening start we had.

I was naive, very naive. I’m sure there will be many of you face-palming as I say this, but I wasn’t expecting there to be so. much. pee. Amelia would happily sit on her little potty that looks like a much smaller version of mommy and daddy’s toilet, but would she pee on it? Of course not!
After many, many,many, pairs of wet pants, wet patches on the carpet in various places – mostly the corners of the room, with the occasional added surprise of the middle of the room. The place you forget about after you’ve cleaned it and proceed to step in it hours later, which the causes a wet sock moment (gross!) and you instantly remember why you shouldn’t of stepped there. Yeah, after many of these moments, but never showing that you might be a teeny bit miffed and paranoid that you and the house now smell like toddler pee – which I’m almost certain smells SO much different to adult pee, after a few days, we finally had our first pee on the potty! And my goodness, what a relieving and incredibly proud moment that was! I actually remember squealing when Amelia did her first pee on the potty!

We found these two Ladybird books super helpful too, one is a story about potty training and the other is an activity book about potty training, it also came with a reward chart which Amelia loved sticking her stars on! You’ll have to excuse the stock images, the girls have kindly drawn all over our copies!

Now, something that may confuse anybody who’s potty trained in the past, is potty training right now, or is about to. We decided that we weren’t going to be too strict about it. We have obviously never done this before, nor had we done much research. I am a thorough believer that every child and parent are different. We all have our own opinions and parenting styles and our children all learn and do things at their own pace.
We decided that a couple of days after her first potty pee, we put Amelia back into nappies, for her to go back into pants a few days later. Not only for her benefit, but for ours. I couldn’t stay cooped up in the house for weeks until she can recognise when to tell me that she needs to pee before she’s actually done it. That may sound selfish but hey, I’m only human and I just can’t do that.

Surprisingly to others though, I feel this has worked well for Amelia. In the last 3 weeks, she has been in both nappies and pants, sometimes even in the same day, but when she needs to pee, she will take her nappy off herself to then pee in her potty! I feel that 100% is progress. Yes sometimes she says she doesn’t need to go, but then goes a few minutes later on her own accord – but that stubbornness is a big trait in both families – haha! We are now on day 4 of no accidents and the only time Amelia has been in nappies is whenever we’ve gone out for longer than 30minutes – she even has dry days at nursery!

I definitely believe there is no fool proof way of potty training any child. Not only that, I think you have to just be able to recognise when you think both YOU and your child are ready. If you can’t commit yourself to asking if your child needs to pee 2000 times a day then maybe you should wait a bit – haha! But seriously, if you aren’t fully prepared for pee to be everywhere, like we weren’t prepared at all, then maybe trying alternate days in nappies and pants might work for you too – I’d be happy to hear your thoughts!

*The product links in this post are affiliate links, but I am in no way sponsored or being paid to mention them.

That’s amazing that your daughter was potty trained so early! I had heard of children being potty trained from as young as 12months – I would never have the patience – haha.
It’s great your mum helped you along the way with it, I do often wish we had someone to potty train for us – it did get a little irritating some days, but I feel we got off a little too easy and we’ll be in for a tough ride with it when it comes to potty training Lilly, haha.